Finishing the back of your paintings

If you want to gift, sell or display your art, you can create a good impression if the back of your painting looks (nearly) as good as the front. In this video I will show you how I have been adding a dust cover, painting label and hanging hardware to the back of my paintings.

There is more than one way to hang and finish a painting, and I won’t go into a huge amount of detail here or talk through all the different materials, options and tools etc. If you are displaying your art professionally in a smart gallery they will most likely have a set of guidelines to follow, but for gifts and sales, something neat but simple will usually suffice. Here’s a quick video on how I do mine.

Extras – you might like to add little foam, felt or rubber pads to the bottom corners of your painting where it touches the wall. I didn’t have any but they do prevent the painting marking the wall and also help it to hang straight. I suggest something like these.

Get it in a kit – you can get a great kit here which has every thing you need. The kit includes the F60 Dust Cover Trimmer with two extra blades, a large roll of dust cover paper, 20 feet of heavy duty coated picture framing wire, saw tooth hangers, felt bumpers, D-rings with screws, a roll of ATG tape, and fully illustrated instructions.

It’s been a week now since I stuck on that brown paper and so far so good. No sign that it is coming up. I really do think there must have been some oil on the back of the previous canvas I tried. If you can’t get the tape to stick, you can always use any regular household adhesive. This is the one I usually use for this sort of thing, called Weld It – sticks all sort of things.

I hope this quick video was helpful. Do let me know any other topics you would like me to cover.